


i hunt for you with bloody feet across the hallowed ground

by hypotheticalfanfic



Series: various storms + saints [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Folklore, Gen, Storytelling, Trent Ikithon Dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-04
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-16 07:00:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29203248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hypotheticalfanfic/pseuds/hypotheticalfanfic
Summary: "My father, my father, and do you not hearWhat the Elf-king quietly promises me?Be calm, stay calm, my child;Through dry leaves the wind is sighing."
Series: various storms + saints [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2144124
Comments: 4
Kudos: 16





	i hunt for you with bloody feet across the hallowed ground

“I’m not afraid. Not anymore.”

“Good.” His master’s face creaks into the filthy smile, so familiar. “Then let us begin, young Bren.”

“That’s not his fucking name,” one of the others says, probably Beauregard, though the orb around them distorts the sound too much to be sure.

“Yeah, fucko, get bent,” no, never mind, that one was Beau. He feels a grin dance along his face, and lets it out. His hair tears loose of its tie, whips around his face, and he can feel Frumpkin - a sparrow, right now - shiver in the pocket of his coat.

“Amusing.” His master’s smile stiffens. “Now, Bren, show me what you’ve learned.”

* * *

Once upon a time, a small boy with sandy red hair watches a flicker of flame he has summoned over his hand. It looks like a fairy dancing, and he smiles - the wide smile of a child, a dimpled chin, bright eyes. The boy stays out all night, playing with the flame, and when the sun rises he is hot to touch and coughing, a tearing sound in his lungs. He crawls to his house, his vision swimming, and calls hoarse and harrowed for his mother.

In his parents’ bed, his father away a soldier, no doctor for a day’s ride, the boy asks his mother for the story of the fairy king. “Oh, schatz, that’s such a scary one, so sad,” she says, her hand cool on his fevered forehead. “Do you wish it?”

“Ja,” he says, a shiver shaking his voice to shreds. “Der Erlköning.”

His mother, her faded brown hair pulled back, flickering red in the firelight, looks nervously around. “A bad story for when a son is sick, my love. I’ll tell you of King Goldemar, instead.” She begins: the laughing dwarven man, his gambling and his harp, the one eternal rule he gave his host. “‘No man,’” the boy’s mother growls, “‘may see me, and I shall make you rich beyond dreams,’ and for some time the household listened. The King walked unseen, and pulled on women’s curls and tweaked men’s noses, put out candles and knocked over jugs, and in return the host’s household flourished and grew rich. But the servants were not happy, for the King’s mischief was cruel and frightening. And then a man too curious, a man in the host’s household, what did he do?” She pauses, but the boy in the bed is fitful, asleep but only just, still radiating heat far more than the fire. “Yes, Bren, just right. He covered the floor with ashes and wheat, and waited for nine days and nine nights until the King came calling again. The King, unknowing, kicked up the ash, and the King, unseeing, trod on the wheat. And the man saw, just enough, the outline of King Goldemar. Bren?” She reaches over again, touches the boy’s head: sweat, cool enough. The fever breaks at last, and she kneels at the bedside and prays fervent chants to the Dawnfather, thanks unending.

* * *

Caleb is better, now, than his master. Not at everything - Trent has the vicious bite of a serpent, the mind of a dragon, and Caleb must defend himself with too much of his effort at first. But Caleb has learned, as Veth once assured him, so much, and from so many places.

His friends can just see through the wall Trent erected: Caleb’s cat claw punching like Beau, tearing into Trent once, twice before the older wizard dispels is. Can see Trent throw bolt after bolt at Caleb’s shield, at Caleb shaped like a T-rex, like a giant tiger, like a terrible river monster they saw in the south. They can see the searing red of the eye on his arm, sometimes, as his coat is torn from him in the screaming violent wind. They, each of them, circle outside the barrier, testing and poking and shouting, trying with equal fervor to knock through it and distract its caster, to give Caleb an edge he doesn’t quite need.

* * *

“Mother,” the young man calls, “we are here!”

His mother runs to him, gathers him to her. “Oh, Bren, you’ve grown so handsome!” She sees the other two, and pulls them in as well. “Astrid, so beautiful, your hair looks lovely. And Wulf, so strong! You could lift a boulder now!” The hug is long and warm and so kind, and the young man wants to weep. What is coming, he knows now, will end him.

Over dinner, the other two look from him to his parents. His father, so much older now, leans back, belly full. “Shall we have a story over cakes, kinder?”

“Ja,” the young man says, his eyes on his plate. “Der Erlköning, Mother?”

She frowns, pours more soft beer for Wulf and for Astrid. “Such a sad story, for such a happy night. Nein,” she smiles. “The tale of Rübezahl, and how he kidnapped a clever woman.”

Astrid laughs. “Fraü Ermendrud! You remembered.”

“Of course,” the boy’s mother replies. “Like the girl in the story, you have always seen the way out, little star. And you,” she says, looking at the two young men, “could do well to learn from her.” She begins the story, about the lonely giant who sees a clever girl with long red hair, who pulls her from her parents and keeps her for himself. “And she told the giant of her loneliness, how she missed her family so. She wept, and where her tears fell, diamonds gleamed; she tore at her hair, and where it fell, crimson flowers bloomed. And soon the giant, in hopes of keeping her, pulled all the turnips from his vegetable garden, pop-pop-pop, one by one. The giant gave them feet and hands, eyes and mouths, and breathed upon them, and they awoke. The turnips rose, stood, each different, each alive now, and they danced with the girl from morning until night.” The story went on, and soon all were tired, and the young ones were sent upstairs to bed. The young man’s mother caught his arm, pulled him in for another embrace. “My son,” she whispers, “I am so happy to see you, and so proud. We both are.” Those are the last things the young man hears his mother say to him, the last true things.

* * *

Trent begins to falter, to perform the same motion over and over and over, no more ideas, and Caleb roars, Caleb laughs, Caleb presses forward. With Fjord’s tactics, with Yasha’s quiet rage, with Jester’s flashes of brilliance, he presses. When Trent begins to pant, to panic, Caleb’s face looks like Caduceus, long and calm and at peace. And when the last blow brings Trent’s wall down, Caleb’s shoulders heaving, blood and sweat pouring from him, the Nein can see a copper wire in his cupped and shaking hand. Veth weeps, laughs, runs to the wizard.

* * *

“The story is hard to tell without music,” Caleb says, Caduceus soothing wound after wound. They are small but myriad, and the firbolg takes his time with each one. The others sit touching their friend, holding each other, an endless circle of comfort.

“You don’t have to—“ Fjord is silenced by Veth’s glare, by Yasha’s frown, by a shove from Jester.

“Yasha, can you drum this?” Caleb’s bloodied hand moves, taps against his leg, a thrumming, mad pattern like a galloping heartbeat, like a racing horse. She watches, nods, picks up the rhythm for him. He begins, his voice lower and richer than usual, “Who rides so late through night and wind? It is the father with his child.” Caleb is clearly reciting someone else’s version of the story - pauses in places his speech pattern wouldn’t place them, and a lilt he doesn’t often have. The Nein listen, ever more horrified. Jester’s hands cover her mouth, Beau’s frown deepens, Fjord leans back away from the sound of Caleb’s voice. Veth and Cad nod along, something familiar in the tale, and Yasha’s careful keeping of the rhythm never falters. Caleb, at long last, reaches out and grabs her wrist, stops the rhythm for the last line. “In his arms, the child was dead.”

The tower is quiet. They can just hear, if they try, the fires crackling.

“Your voice was different, when you were telling it.” Jester’s eyes are soft, holding his gaze. “It was very nice. You should tell us stories more often.”

He laughs, at first a desperate half-sob, but it gets away from him, turns into a head-back guffaw of the kind only Jester ever seems to provoke. Yasha leans toward him, puts one big hand on his back.

“My mother used to tell that story sometimes. Not to me,” he wipes his eyes, smears a little blood, a little ash. “It wasn’t appropriate for children. Too scary, too sad, and no matter how I begged, she would tell me a different story instead, each time. But to others, on festival nights and things. She was very talented.”

“I should think so,” Cad mutters, “given your own gifts.”

The eye on his arm twitches, just a bit, and Beau growls at it. “Caleb. How do you feel?”

“Tired.” He closes his eyes. “Very tired. Not that different otherwise.” He sleeps soon enough, curled around a fey cat and surrounded by warmth. And if in his mind the deranged hoofbeats still sound, they are perhaps a little quieter than they have been for some time.

**Author's Note:**

> \- title from "Howl," Florence + the Machine  
> \- [King Goldemar ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Goldemar)is a real story, and it ends...bloody.   
> \- [The Rübezahl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%BCbezahl) is also a part of many real stories, and the one Caleb’s mother tells ends much more happily  
> \- Der Erlköning, put to music by Franz Schubert, [my personal favorite baritone performance](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMm44m6dWNw)


End file.
